Page:The Art of Helping People Out of Trouble (1924).pdf/239

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used for this purpose the prosecution of the father of the second child, the woman having entered suit upon the uninformed advice of a neighbor. The case might have been dropped but the social worker saw in it the one chance of clearing the unrealities from the girl's life. Nor until the young woman had admitted the truth on the witness stand did she appreciate the extent to which she had been living on a false basis and begin to face life squarely. An opportunity now offered itself for her to make her home with a family. Here as a mother's helper she spent a year that was happier than any other previous year in her history, the only shadow upon it being the death of her first child. She was made to feel that she had a genuine share in the family life, the nearest approach to a home that she had experienced. Then she met a man whose earlier career had been as unhappy as her own. In the marriage which followed she found the true realization of her desires, incidentally after the birth of their first child reëstablishing for her husband ties with his own relatives which had long been broken.

Undoubtedly it was in the having of a family of her own that the solution of the young woman's problem lay. In helping her to clear her life of un-